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Safe Houses
Gerda, the former mistress of both Adolf Eichmann and Raoul Wallenberg, a Hungarian Jew whose once great beauty is fading in a Brooklyn apartment, Rella, her ugly and gullible daughter, and Jack, an upstairs neighbor, share an extraordinary past
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
52 people want to read
About the author
Lynne Alexander
11 books1 followerBorn in 1943. "Lynne Alexander was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has lived in the U.K. since 1970. She became an accomplished harpsichordist before turning to writing in 1980. Her first novel, Safe Houses, was published in Britain in l984 (Michael Joseph; King Penguin) and has been translated into 8 languages. Since then she has published four more novels: Resonating Bodies (Macmillan), Taking Heart (Fourth Estate), Adolf's Revenge (Abacus) and Intimate Cartographies (Duckworth). In publishing limbo at the moment are: The Second Most Dangerous Woman in America (about the American anarchist Emma Goldman), and a verse novel, Roy & Pearl in Wombland.
From l990-95 she was Writer in Residence at hospices in Lancaster, Oxford and Ulverston and published two volumes of poetry based on collaborations with patients: Now I Can Tell (Macmillan) and Throwaway Lines (Sobell House Publications).
In 1996 she won an Arts Council Writer's Award for The Second Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Lynne teaches Novel Writing at Sheffield Hallam University (MA in Creative Writing)."
(http://www.rlf.org.uk/fellowshipschem...)
From l990-95 she was Writer in Residence at hospices in Lancaster, Oxford and Ulverston and published two volumes of poetry based on collaborations with patients: Now I Can Tell (Macmillan) and Throwaway Lines (Sobell House Publications).
In 1996 she won an Arts Council Writer's Award for The Second Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Lynne teaches Novel Writing at Sheffield Hallam University (MA in Creative Writing)."
(http://www.rlf.org.uk/fellowshipschem...)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 19, 2021
Haunting, this improbable, but perhaps NOT completely impossible tale inexplicably draws in the reader by sheer force of its curiousness. Altho I read this book over 34 years ago, I find this story and its characters rise in mind totally unbidden....I dare anyone who reads Lynne Alexander's Safe Houses to be able to resist a run to the nearest patisserie in an attempt to recreate the gustatory heaven she describes...
September 29, 2024
"I have been inside for eleven years, same as Raoul. Why should we leave our safe houses now? What would be gained?" -Lynne Alexander, Safe Houses
A strange book that defies categorization. Gerda is a Hungarian Jewish holocaust survivor and Jack is a Viennese pastry chef with amnesia. During World War II, they worked at the Hotel Majestic in Budapest- Jack as a baker and Gerda as a wine waitress/prostitute. Gerda had a sexual relationship with Raoul Wallenberg- a real Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews- and Adolf Eichmann, the SS colonel in charge of the 'final solution'. After the war, Jack and Gerda settle in the same Brooklyn apartment building and try to start new lives. Gerda has a too-thin, unattractive daughter, Rella, and one of the two men is her father. The hero or the monster. It's like a messed-up version of Mamma Mia.
If all this sounds absurd and hard to believe, well, it is. But Alexander almost makes it work. Almost. I found Gerda a hard character to like. She's blunt, crude, has no filter, and describes her own daughter in very unflattering terms: she compares Rella's eyes to wet meatballs flecked with oats, her breasts to pink Hershey kisses on a Monopoly board, and says she looks like a fish from the bottom of a river. Ouch. Gerda takes great pride in her physical beauty, almost to the point of narcissism. And yet, I kind of felt sorry for her, for shutting herself away in her apartment and watching the world go by outside her window.
I liked Jack a lot more. He's simple-minded, a little childish, and thinks he can talk to trees. And he can only speak in food metaphors/similes- his countless descriptions of pastries, tortes, and strudels actually made me hungry. The book is written in first-person point of view, Jack and Gerda tell their stories in alternating chapters. Part 3 takes place in wartime Hungary, and shows what happened to Jack and Gerda during that time. I thought part 3 was the best part, the rest of the book was just OK. It's a very character-driven story written in a stream-of-consciousness style, and that's not for everyone. Including me.
Not much happens until near the end of the book, when . All of this kind of comes out of nowhere. We may never know what happened to Raoul Wallenberg- evidence suggests he died in Soviet custody in 1947- and the author doesn't try to answer that question. Just like in real life, there aren't always easy answers.
Safe Houses doesn't fit neatly into one genre. Is it a war story? A character piece? A fantasy? A fairy tale? All of these things? It tries to blend the serious with the fantastical, comedy and tragedy. Unfortunately, this book didn't quite come together for me.
A strange book that defies categorization. Gerda is a Hungarian Jewish holocaust survivor and Jack is a Viennese pastry chef with amnesia. During World War II, they worked at the Hotel Majestic in Budapest- Jack as a baker and Gerda as a wine waitress/prostitute. Gerda had a sexual relationship with Raoul Wallenberg- a real Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews- and Adolf Eichmann, the SS colonel in charge of the 'final solution'. After the war, Jack and Gerda settle in the same Brooklyn apartment building and try to start new lives. Gerda has a too-thin, unattractive daughter, Rella, and one of the two men is her father. The hero or the monster. It's like a messed-up version of Mamma Mia.
If all this sounds absurd and hard to believe, well, it is. But Alexander almost makes it work. Almost. I found Gerda a hard character to like. She's blunt, crude, has no filter, and describes her own daughter in very unflattering terms: she compares Rella's eyes to wet meatballs flecked with oats, her breasts to pink Hershey kisses on a Monopoly board, and says she looks like a fish from the bottom of a river. Ouch. Gerda takes great pride in her physical beauty, almost to the point of narcissism. And yet, I kind of felt sorry for her, for shutting herself away in her apartment and watching the world go by outside her window.
I liked Jack a lot more. He's simple-minded, a little childish, and thinks he can talk to trees. And he can only speak in food metaphors/similes- his countless descriptions of pastries, tortes, and strudels actually made me hungry. The book is written in first-person point of view, Jack and Gerda tell their stories in alternating chapters. Part 3 takes place in wartime Hungary, and shows what happened to Jack and Gerda during that time. I thought part 3 was the best part, the rest of the book was just OK. It's a very character-driven story written in a stream-of-consciousness style, and that's not for everyone. Including me.
Not much happens until near the end of the book, when . All of this kind of comes out of nowhere. We may never know what happened to Raoul Wallenberg- evidence suggests he died in Soviet custody in 1947- and the author doesn't try to answer that question. Just like in real life, there aren't always easy answers.
Safe Houses doesn't fit neatly into one genre. Is it a war story? A character piece? A fantasy? A fairy tale? All of these things? It tries to blend the serious with the fantastical, comedy and tragedy. Unfortunately, this book didn't quite come together for me.
December 28, 2021
This was a hidden gem. A random selection at a second hand bookshop twenty years ago, it's been on my shelf and finally I picked it up.
Gerda is a beautiful immigrant to America from Hungary after WW2. She was a wine waitress (with benefits) at the Majestic hotel and as such was involved with two men of the moment. Raoul Wallenberg - a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jewish people during the seige of Budapest (this guy was for real by the way), and Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who was leading the deportations of the Jews and eventually the death marches.
While the subject matter is historical, the fictional story woven around it is hilariously written and almost believable. Gerda arrived in New York pregnant, who was the father, Raoul or Eichmann?
Another immigrant, coincidentally living in the same apartment building in Brooklyn is a master pastry chef from Vienna. His love of food and all living things (particularly trees) has a major theme throughout the book and the descriptions of streusal, cream puffs and croqemboque will have you licking your lips.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and did a good amount of googling afterwards to understand more about that time. Lynne Alexander deserves to be an author well known for this work.
Gerda is a beautiful immigrant to America from Hungary after WW2. She was a wine waitress (with benefits) at the Majestic hotel and as such was involved with two men of the moment. Raoul Wallenberg - a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jewish people during the seige of Budapest (this guy was for real by the way), and Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who was leading the deportations of the Jews and eventually the death marches.
While the subject matter is historical, the fictional story woven around it is hilariously written and almost believable. Gerda arrived in New York pregnant, who was the father, Raoul or Eichmann?
Another immigrant, coincidentally living in the same apartment building in Brooklyn is a master pastry chef from Vienna. His love of food and all living things (particularly trees) has a major theme throughout the book and the descriptions of streusal, cream puffs and croqemboque will have you licking your lips.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and did a good amount of googling afterwards to understand more about that time. Lynne Alexander deserves to be an author well known for this work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews